Tom Shires

George Thomas Shires (1925-2007), known as Tom Shires, was an American trauma surgeon born in Waco, Texas and raised in Dallas. He earned his medical degree at Southwestern Medical School in 1948, trained at Parkland Memorial Hospital and served as a Navy surgeon before joining the Southwestern faculty, where he became chair of surgery in 1961. He is known for research on shock that led to the current practice of giving saline to trauma and surgical patients. In Dallas he worked with the fire department to start one of the earliest paramedic systems in the country, and he later led surgery departments and a trauma and burns program in New York, Lubbock and Las Vegas. After the shooting of President Kennedy in 1963 he operated on John Connally and later on Lee Harvey Oswald.